


Triumvirate

by storyskein, verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Basically a Smut Saga, F/F, F/M, Jealousy, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome, deep pov, eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-08 09:26:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7752190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyskein/pseuds/storyskein, https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Well, then, she knows, right? In the mixed up emotions of her people being attacked, and being in Polis as a prisoner for a week and then not, how beautiful Lexa looked on that dais, how humiliated Clarke felt as she knelt, the confusion and relief of Bellamy just being there, and then...this, he has a girlfriend, he has someone else.</em><br/> </p><p>Or: Gina doesn't die, and Gina, Bellamy, and Clarke have to figure out what that means for each of them as individuals...and quite possibly, together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. there was bad blood in us

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, two smut authors were headcanon-ing season 3 fix-its and lamenting over Gina's death. Lo, in fanfic, Gina doesn't have to die! An OT3 was born that day, one that has had us crying and drinking lots of wine and sobbing on the floor every day since. We wanted to share that pain (and happiness), so here we are!
> 
> Triumvirate is basically a canon-divergent smut saga in which we'll work through issues with Bellamy, Clarke, and Gina as individuals and as polyamorous triad. Enjoy!

The closest thing that Clarke can liken riding in the Rover to is the crash landing on Earth in the dropship. She’s bounced and jostled and on one particularly large tree root, she reckons there are a good six inches between her ass and the seat cushions before she lands back with an oof. 

“You okay?” Bellamy’s voice speaks out from the jolting darkness, low and gravelly. Fuck she missed it these past months. There’s a tightness to it, a tension in the very air around him. Not that she blames him. She keeps replaying Raven’s voice on that staticky radio, circling it around and around in her head. 

_“Bellamy, Bellamy. The grounders attacked Mount Weather.”_

_“What do you mean, attacked, Raven?”_

_“An assassin...somebody, I don’t know, came in. Tried to blow it up. We stopped them, but Gina....”_

_“What about Gina, Raven?” No answer. “What about Gina?”_

_A crackle._

_“Gina’s hurt, Bellamy. I don’t know--Sinclair is trying--”_

_Silence._

_Bellamy mashed the button again, but the radio was dead._

The throne room exploded with yelling and accusations, the Ice Nation ambassador and Titus practically coming to blows in front of Lexa’s throne. Lexa, trying to order Clarke to stay on as ambassador, Abby, pleading with her to come home. Then, Bellamy, who was alive, breaking through the throngs of people to come to her. 

“Clarke, we need to get out of here.” To anyone else, it would sound a shade away from an order. 

Clarke knew it was a plea. 

Behind her, Lexa’s steely voice countering with, “We need someone to stay on as ambassador.” 

“It’s not safe here.” Bellamy’s face looked carved of granite in that moment; he was trying hard to keep control of himself. Clarke wanted to reach out and touch him, but she couldn’t. Shouldn’t. 

“Clarke will be safe under my protection.” 

It crossed Clarke’s mind to stay. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, saying goodbye to life in a tower, life with a protector, life away from everyone in Arkadia, even if just for a little while longer. A little more time to adjust to being with people again before seeing her people. She didn’t know what that said about her--actually, she did, that she had a necrotic heart made of shadows and fear--

But when she opened her eyes, saw her mom’s wide eyes looking at her, the rage and desperation seething under the steel in Bellamy’s face...time was up. Clarke looked into Bellamy’s eyes, his eyes searching hers, and focused on him. He would be there. If he was there, she could go home. 

Keeping her eyes focused on Bellamy, Clarke said, “I’m going home.”

*

She wants to ask him who Gina is. Why his whole body recoiled at the silence on the line, when he kept pressing the button to an empty click. The cagey desperation that only Kane could control, whispering to him fiercely about getting everyone out as fast as possible. Why her mother, _her mother_ , gave him a long hug and told him, “We’ll get back as fast as possible.” Octavia sitting next to him, hand holding his, looking straight ahead except when she was slanting concerned glances at him. 

Well, then, she knows, right? In the mixed up emotions of her people being attacked, and being in Polis as a prisoner for a week and then not, how beautiful Lexa looked on that dais, how humiliated Clarke felt as she knelt, the confusion and relief of Bellamy just _being there_ , and then...this, he has a girlfriend, he has someone else.

The memories and emotions of the past three months flare and recede. The first few weeks by herself, cold and alone and starving until Niylah found her lingering at the edge of the trading post. Brought her in. Taught her how to survive, taught her how to trade. In the darkness of the Rover, Clarke remembers the dim lighting of Niylah’s room, the soft furs, her sweet touch. 

That memory gives way to the screaming of panthers and viscous blood on her hands. The tiny twitching noses of the rabbits she used as bait, the frigid mountain streams she would dunk herself occasionally, just to punctuate her existence somehow. How the days morphed into weeks, mutated into months. That one night, foggy and ethereal, when she had lost her way only to look up and see the lights of Arkadia piercing the gloom. She had stepped on a twig, and it snapped ( _she hadn’t made such a foolish mistake in weeks, had she wanted to be found?_ ) A guard yelled, “Movement in corridor five!” 

She ran away from that voice, silent once again. 

And then, then: Bellamy crossing that army to rescue her, that smile when he saw her. Roan knocking him out, almost killing him, the shriek that burst out of her to plead for his life. Her skin prickles with a cold sweat remembering it, thinking him hurt or even dead and not knowing for a whole week until just a few hours ago. Lexa coming to visit her in the room, the bone-handled knife cool and assuring in her palm. 

Anxiety rolls over her and then anger burns it away, grief threatens to pull at her, and then a weird jealousy, a bitterness, pricks at it. There’s relief that her mom and Bellamy are in the car, they are with her, it’s so profound her head tilts back, she opens her mouth and sighs. Only it’s tanked by the thought that she’s gone from feral to prisoner to being shuttled back to Arkadia in a span of a few days and _I’m not ready oh god I’m not ready._

Clarke wants to reach for Bellamy. Hold his hand, touch him, just something. Her body aches for it, and she doesn’t question it, doesn’t question the instincts she’s honed for three months out in the forest. But he’s sitting across from her, and there’s the spectre of a dead-or-alive Gina between them, and for some reason, he can barely look at her. And she gets it. The Grounder paint is still smudged over her eyes, and though she had time to change, her hair is in braid-crown and the rings on her fingers are heavy tokens of the life that she might have led. Had things been, in just one instant, different. 

Before Clarke realizes what she’s doing, she tugs at the rings. Her hands are swollen in the heat, and they’re not coming off. 

“What are you doing?” Octavia’s asks after watching her struggle for a few moments. The moon lights Octavia’s face through the shudders, her voice harsh and imperious. 

Clarke shakes her head, fuck, didn’t want the attention. “Nothing. I just…,” but now she needs to get the rings off. They mean something else, something that didn’t happen; they’re kneeling before Lexa, they’re being a prisoner without contact for a week; they’re conceding that killing 300 people in that fucking mountain was necessary and heroic not something that has broken her and---

Bellamy takes her hand in his. Her breath leaves her, and she’s pretty sure her heart stops. And then, none of the before mattered so much as him being there, the fact that they made it out. Again, together, they made it out alive. 

“You okay?” Clarke meets his eyes, watches them widen slightly. Then she drops her gaze back down to where her hand is in his palm, his large fingers working at the ring on her middle finger. 

Bellamy doesn’t answer for a moment. “Gina is my girlfriend.”

“Oh.” She lays her other hand on top of both of his, grips them. _She’ll be okay_ is what anyone else would say, but she can’t quite bring herself to say it. A hot feeling snakes through her gut, and it takes her a moment to realize that she’s jealous. Jealous of a woman who Bellamy cares for and who now might be dead. Shame curls into the jealousy and Clarke turns her face from him. 

In the silence, he moves his fingers again, keeps twisting at the jewelry, a little harder. He’s tugging too hard, and it hurts, but Clarke doesn’t say anything as he pulls. He’s trying to be gentle, but goddamn, it’s on tight--but then the first ring, a thick, gaudy golden piece, pops free. The other four follow until they clink in his palm as he holds them out to her. 

“Here.” Worry and ache and grief ride on Bellamy’s shoulders, but there’s relief in his voice as he speaks to her. Whatever is between them right now is a mystery, but they’re riding back into Arkadia together, and Clarke feels that relief too. 

“I don’t want them,” she tries to keep her voice light. “I’m not much for jewelry.”

Bellamy smirks at her. “No. But they might be useful for trading.”

“Mom,” she calls up to the front. Abby turns her head, smiles to see her daughter. Clarke nods her head to Bellamy. “Take those.”

Bellamy half-way stands, leans over and drops them in Abby’s palm. Abby looks sharply up at Clarke. “Are you sure you don’t want them, honey?”

“No. I don’t need them. But they might be useful.” 

Abby gives her a long, searching look. “If you’re sure.” 

Clarke says she’s sure, as reassuring as she can. Abby turns back around to the front, sharing glances with Kane. _Since when was that a thing?_

A few minutes later and Octavia is asleep, half curled up on the Rover bench. Bellamy is leaned forward over his knees, head in his hands. 

The sight of Bellamy hunched forward, struggling with this burden alone, this fear that the formless, faceless Gina, may be dying, may be _dead_ , douses the hot jealousy in her stomach. She can't let Bellamy do this alone. Bellamy, who appeared like an apparition when she was most alone, who came to Polis for her, he shouldn't have to sit on this alone. Clarke may be hardened, cold, a creature without a home, but Bellamy needs her.

Clarke can’t--doesn’t want--to help herself. She reaches out a hand, places it on his shoulder. He looks up through his fingers, through his curls. 

“We’ll save her, Bellamy.” She needs Bellamy to believe in this, to believe in her, in them. That even though she and Bellamy don’t make false promises to each other, this feels different. Like she has to will it into being. Gina. Cannot. Die. 

“You don’t know that.”

“No. No, Bellamy.” Clarke holds his gaze, shakes her head. “She’ll be okay. We’ll get there, okay? We’ll get there. If she’s hurt, my mom and I will fix it.”

“Clarke…I left her there. In that Mountain. If she’s dead--”

Clarke’s fingers flex into the old canvas of the guard jacket. “No, Bellamy. You can’t think that way. There’s no way you could have known.” 

Bellamy looks at her, wary and distrustful, but fuck, he has to believe this. She has to believe it. There can’t be more death laid at their feet, can’t be more guilt and failure laid at his. Why it circles them, preys at them, she doesn’t know, but not tonight. 

He nods once--not believing, but his shoulders loosen. He reaches one hand across his body, covers hers with it, squeezes lightly. 

They ride the rest of the way to Arkadia, hands linked, heads bowed. 

*

 

Bellamy knows that seeing Clarke in that grounder get-up will never be a memory that he can fully look at. Ever. That wailing ballad as they ran through the halls, Lexa on that fucking platform, and just _knowing_ that Clarke was on her knees seconds before. Pledging what she didn’t have the right to pledge, promising something on the back of an act that broke her, broke him, broke them…

And as much as he got it--was trying to, anyway, trying to understand what Kane was doing, why he thought he could trust Lexa--seeing Clarke with the black paint across her eyes, the rings on her fingers, the cling of the dress against her skin.

The thing was, he should have found her beautiful. In that dress, with that hair. He had never seen a person in elegant clothing before, and Clarke...He could always take one look at Clarke and no matter what was happening, feel that as long as they were figuring out their shit together, things were okay. He had a bit of peace. And it made him feel stupid as fuck, but that peace made her the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

But looking at her as he approached in the tower, he didn’t even recognize her. No sense that this was the Clarke that had left him all those months ago. So it shocked him, more than he cared to admit, that she had decided to come home. 

Bellamy watched as her eyes went wild at the thought of going to Arkadia. He braced for the word no and didn’t even think about saying-- _hey, please, come home, I need you, my girlfriend might be dead and I need you_. He just readied for it. 

But instead, she came. 

Bellamy tries to tamp down the worry about Gina, tries to focus on what he can control. In short, in the Rover, nothing but getting his mind right about Clarke before they get home to Arkadia. Her hand is in his, and he hates even now thinking about his automatic reach for her, his automatic need to go to her every time, no matter what. 

_You cross armies for her. You run into death traps 30 stories high for her._

The thoughts needle at him, even as his head is bowed with hers, even as their knees touch, as they breathe the same sphere of air. 

The thing is that he knows what it means. The fact that he loved her crashed over him like a tsunami seven days ago, when he lost her to that grounder and went wild with it, right in front of Pike and Hannah and Monty and Kane. His leg had been bleeding out, sending searing shocks across his hips and lancing up his spine, but he didn't give a fuck. Everyone saw, and even now that knowledge causes him to flush. His breath hitches and Clarke looks up at him, squeezes her hand, and fuck. She thinks it’s because he’s worried about Gina, which he is, but it’s really because he’s thinking about how much he loves her, too. 

_Thinking about how much you love one woman when the other one might be critically injured or dead. Nice, Blake, you colossal dickhead._

The scouts from Arkadia save him from his thoughts. Two dark figures on horseback hail them to stop right inside the territory boundary and one of the riders flashes the Ark signal with their flashlight. 

Miller’s face leans into the window. He finds Bellamy in the back, hands linked with Clarke whose head is still bowed. Being Miller like he is, only a slight upward tilt of his eyebrow registers any surprise. 

“Well, hey, Clarke,” Miller says, tone easy. Clarke jerks her head up but eases when she sees who it is. Her hands are becoming damp in his. Instinctively, he squeezes her fingers. 

“Gina’s okay,” MIller says to him, and now it’s Clarke squeezing his hand as he lets out a sigh. “She has some injuries, but Jackson was able to patch her up. She’ll be in Med Bay when you arrive.” Miller turns to Kane now, but still loud enough so they can all hear. “The assassin is dead, but a scouting team came in from the west and reported movement, so we’re going to bring you guys in.” 

“Sounds good,” Kane said. “Let’s get home.” 

Arkadia glows over the horizon, emergency lights at full blast. Light floods the Rover as they approach, and Octavia yawns and stretches beside him. She rubs a palm blearily over her eyes, glances at his and Clarke’s linked hands. Clarke’s eyes are closed, her breathing a bit shallow, so she doesn’t notice--but Octavia does, and her face softens and she gives Bellamy a look he doesn’t care to interpret at the moment. He glares back at her, but she just shrugs, unrepentant. 

Clarke’s eyes open at the metallic grinding of the gates, and she leans back to look at Arkadia through the shutters. He realizes that the last time she was here the gate was just patched together electrical wire and leftover bits of the Ark. It comes to him suddenly that maybe she watched them, that that thought makes him blanch, to think of her standing outside the treeline and not coming in. Her hand falls off his shoulder at the movement, her eyes snap to his, questioning. 

Kane jerks the brakes on the Rover, and the doors jerk open, and there’s no time for anything else between him and Clarke. Raven is standing there, handle still in her hand, with a look that’s half wary, half amazement. Miller and Monty and Harper are standing right outside. Clarke recoils from him, from all of them, and it’s a movement that spans less than a second. Maybe only he notices, but he does before she slips her mask back in place. 

“Welcome home,” Monty grins. 

“Hi,” Clarke smiles at them. Bellamy sits back, lets her pass him out of the Rover, trying to get whatever he’s feeling under control. It’s been too much, and he’s too tired, and that little movement--that jerk of fear or anxiety or whatever the hell it was--is making him feel too angry and too bitter. 

And besides. Gina. 

Bellamy’s almost glad of it, though, this mental separation. Because after everyone that has seen his apparent, obvious love for her the last person he wants to notice is Abby, who rounds the corner just as Clarke is encircled by their friends. 

Abby beams at her daughter, but there’s still the signature Griffin-forehead-crease indenting her brow. Abby motions him to come with her. As he passes behind the group Clarke gives him a look that’s part plea for him to stay, part nod for him to go. 

Bellamy tries to smile at her, but he knows his face is twisted into something else and he looks away. 

“Jackson sent an aide to update me on Gina’s situation.” Even at the late hour, the corridors are bustling. Stressed faces stream along the sides of the walls to their emergency stations. Abby’s holding his elbow and steering him through the hallways, and he’s grateful. There’s too much in his head, with his thoughts tearing away from Clarke and being pulled towards Gina. Gina, who he loves, who loves him back. Gina was here; Gina who has never left. 

Bellamy tries to control his voice as he asks, “How is she? What happened?” It doesn’t work, there’s a hitch in it. 

“He slashed at her.” Abby’s tone is matter-of-fact, and she squeezes his arm. “One on her arm required stitches. The ones on her torso are superficial, but we’ll need to keep an eye on them. Raven shot him before he could do anything more.”

“Thank god for Raven.” He says it offhandedly, almost cruel to himself. 

“Hey.” Abby stops him. “Your firearm training plan worked.” Abby then smiles at him, gentle and proud. “If it wasn’t for that, Raven wouldn’t be the good shot that she is. You helped save her, Bellamy.” Bellamy purses his lips at that, not knowing how to accept it, and all at once it sinks in that Gina is _alive_ , and an overwhelming relief crashes through him. For once, someone under his protection didn’t die. For once, he did something that saved someone, and that someone was Gina. 

Tears burn at his eyes, and he leans over his knees, trying to catch his breath. It hits him, all at once, all over again, that not only is Gina alive, but Clarke is too, and she’s safe. At home. In Arkadia. _You brought her home_. After last week he never thought that would happen. He thought she might be gone forever, dead, or taken to a territory beyond his reach, something. But she’s home too, she’s here, in Arkadia. 

It’s too much to handle, especially in front of Abby. Bellamy turns away, grinds his teeth, feels his jaw muscle working trying to contain himself. Things went right, things went right, and in this moment it’s too much to process, too much to trust.

“She’ll be okay. She's tough,” Abby’s voice interrupts him, and he looks up. Abby pauses again, gives him a considering look. He doesn’t quite know who she means, Gina or Clarke. Maybe both. “Thank you, Bellamy.”

Abby’s eyes brighten with tears, and she looks away before continuing. “Cl--she wouldn't have come home, if not for you. I saw it in her face. She almost didn't.”

Bellamy dips his head. He doesn't know what to say because they both know that’s the truth. Clarke almost didn’t come home. 

But Abby doesn’t say anything else. She puts a hand on his back and leads him down the hallway. 

*

Med Bay is a quiet, still respite from the buzzing outside. A few people who caught the last virus that made its rounds are still in bed. Bellamy waves to Juliana Obinata, one of his cadets that fell off a horse early this afternoon--no, yesterday afternoon, he corrects, because christ, he has been awake just that long. She hit her head on a rock in the tumble, and Jackson insisted she stay overnight. 

But Gina isn’t in this room, and panic sets in. What if is worse than they told him, just to get him here before he freaked the fuck out? 

A wildness crawls into his chest at the thought of her hurt, suffering, in pain, alone. All the images that he had been keeping at bay while in the Rover flip through his mind, like the old slide carousel they found in a basement weeks ago: Dante’s office where they found her, the concrete block walls of the Mountain, then flashes of the irradiated bodies in the cafeteria start to intersperse with the memory of the last time she kissed there, _don’t do anything stupidly heroic_ \---

“Bellamy.” 

He latches onto Abby’s voice and wills his thoughts back into focus again. “Where is she?” 

“Around the corner,” Abby responds, voice placid as a summer lake, with just enough of a hint of motherly approval to make him look sharply at her. She just points to a couple of beds around the corner, one on which Gina is sitting up, crossed-leg, looking at him with a small smile. 

He doesn’t even process crossing the floor to her, just one second he’s several feet away, and the next, his arms are around her and she’s sobbing into his jacket as he holds her, repeating over and over again, “It’s all right, baby. I’m here. I’ve got you.” 

Eventually, he crawls into bed with her, pulls her into his lap. He locks his arms around her frame, buries his nose against her neck and just breathes her in. Abby shuts the curtain around them as they rest. 

 

*

Bellamy takes Gina home a few hours later. 

Abby doesn’t protest, just gives him a litany of instructions and bandaging supplies. Gina waves off the painkillers, even though Bellamy and Abby try to insist. Abby hugs both of them as they leave, tells him that she’ll make sure Kane gives him the day off tomorrow. 

Their room is dark when they enter, empty and expectant in a way it’s never felt before. Gina leans heavily on him and the selfish part of him likes that he can feel her warm and solid against him. Bellamy guides her to sit on their bed, breathes her in as her hair moves across his face, the smell of antiseptic and shampoo and the herbal oil Octavia gave her for her birthday. Bellamy wants to crush her to him, but instead he brushes a kiss on her forehead as he kneels down in front of her legs. 

“Babe,” he says softly, bringing a hand up to brush a stray curl behind her ear. Her face is lowered, she’s looking at her hands that are splayed on her knees.“Talk to me?”

Gina sniffs and uses a thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek. She opens her mouth, then closes it, shakes her head a little. 

“Oh, Gina,” he breathes out, leaning his forehead to hers. He’s not going to make her talk if she doesn’t want to; he knows more than most the shock of violence, the first time that you realize someone wants to kill _you_ and will do it if they can. 

But he also doesn’t want her to be alone in it, he doesn’t want her to bury it like he does. She doesn’t have to do that, not with him. 

“I want to go to bed,” she says suddenly, looking up at him. “Can we--can we just do that?”

“Of course, yeah.” 

Gina smiles at him at that, faltering but real. “I need some help--getting out of my clothes and all.” 

He smirks at her. “Not a problem.”

Gina rolls her eyes. They’re still wet with unshed tears, and there are lavender circles underneath them, and her face is pale, but fuck, if Bellamy hasn’t seen a more beautiful sight in his life than her smiling at him in this moment. She starts to reach for the hem of her shirt, but he stops her. “Let me, okay?”

She regards him for a moment because there’s a need in his voice, a need he couldn’t keep out if he tried. 

Bellamy lifts the edge of her shirt, pulling up slowly. Gina lifts her arms above her head and leans over, and he pulls the shirt the rest of the way off, tossing it in their hamper without a glance. 

Gina sits up straighter, there’s some defiance in her posture because now her bandages are on display and she can’t hide behind _I’m fine, stop worrying, I’m fine._

His fingers graze the top of the rectangle of cloth taped to her stomach, and he hears her inhale from above him. 

“Does it hurt?” Stupid question, Blake. 

Gina wants to say no, he can tell, but if nothing else they have truth between them. So she hesitates, then says, “A bit. It’s really just a scratch. Jackson didn’t even need to stitch it. The one on my arm hurts worse.” She twists her shoulders so he can see. “Twelve stitches.” 

“Fuck,” he mutters. Fresh blood is already starting to spot through the bandage. “We need to change it before you go to sleep.” 

“Get the stuff, I’ll take the bandage off.”

Bellamy turns to grab the pack that Abby sent them home with, extra bandages and alcohol and some painkillers, and when he turns back around the gash is on full display. 

He knows, intellectually, that it looks worse than it is, that the black suture thread Jackson used makes it look especially grisly against her smooth skin--but still. Still. He bites his lip, soaks some gauze with antiseptic then reaches out to blot it along the cut. Silence stretches between them as Bellamy measures his breathing, focuses on quelling the anger and worry brewing inside him. 

“Don’t do that,” Gina says abruptly, swatting his hand away. Despite being exhausted she’s practically sparking with irritation. 

Bellamy sits back on his heels. “Do what?”

“Pull away from me. Because you think that somehow me getting hurt is your fault.” Gina holds his stare, unflinching. “It’s not your fault. That some assassin asshole decided to try and blow up Mount Weather has nothing to do with you, Bellamy.” 

Guilt causes a hard flush heat his neck. “But I left you there--”

“And what was the alternative, Bellamy? I was working at Mount Weather. You got a call to go to Polis. You had to go. There was no way that I was going with you.”

Bellamy closes his eyes. He knows what he’s really feeling guilt over is Clarke, and he’s afraid that soon he’s going to be terribly transparent. And then what will happen to him and Gina? 

“I just...I just wish you weren’t hurt,” he finishes lamely. 

Gina quirks an eyebrow. “Well, me too. But maybe instead of beating yourself up about it, be glad that Raven took your firearm course. Be glad that you taught me how to grapple. Be grateful that the assassin was a stupid motherfucker with a bad plan.”

He scoffs. “A bad plan that we fell for.” 

Her face gentles at that. “There’s no way you could have known, Bell. You were doing what you thought was necessary to save your people. To save…,” she looks at him, and a new bit of understanding comes into her eyes, and Bellamy can see it. It takes all of his effort not to look away. “Clarke,” she finishes, and the space between _save_ and _Clarke_ would only be noticeable to them. But it’s there. 

Silence permeates the atmosphere between them, it’s the kind of silence that makes Bellamy aware of just how loud the Ark is. The window is slightly open and he can hear people chattering in the courtyard outside their room. There’s the rustle of footsteps in the corridor, the hum of the air conditioning that works sporadically, the grunt and groan of the generators and the plumbing. In the distance, he hears the signal of the guards changing shift. 

“Well, I should get some sleep,” Gina says finally, and there’s an understanding to her tone that he hates, a gentleness that makes him feel ashamed of the riot in his head. 

Bellamy swallows, licks his lips. “Good idea. I’ll come to bed too.” 

It takes them a few minutes to get situated in bed, but eventually Gina settles on resting on her back, propped up by a few pillows. Bellamy lies alongside her, and he thinks that maybe he should keep his distance. Maybe he exposed too much. But as he drifts off her hand reaches out, and she twines their fingers together. 

*

Afternoon sun slants into their room when a touch jolts Bellamy awake. He’s always been a light sleeper--always, since he can remember, since Octavia was born--and all it takes is the barest touch of Gina’s hand. 

It takes another moment to register that this is deliberate. Gina is sitting up in bed, watching him wake up, watching him realize what she’s doing. 

“Gina…” Sleep has hoarsened his throat, and sheer exhaustion wars with curiosity and the fact that his girlfriend’s hand is inching closer to his dick. “What…”

Gina leans over him, gently kisses him even as she winces from twisting her stomach. 

“Babe, lay back down if you want…” He struggles to sit up, but she kisses him back down, harder now, and now he’s pushing into the kiss, opening his mouth and letting her tongue in. 

“Let me go down on you,” he whispers, then moans as she takes his bottom lip between her teeth. 

She pulls back and stares at him. “No.” 

“No?”

She shakes her head. “No,” then, “I want to fuck you,” said in the same breath. 

“I gathered that.” Gina starts pulling at his boxers, and he helps because she’s not very mobile and the wincing and slowness are starting to kill him. He can’t and doesn’t want to watch it, but she’s growing more determined with every move. 

But then his boxers are off and his half-hard cock is in her hand. He thrusts into her hand and she murmurs a pretty sound, pleased, but then mews a bit when she can’t comfortably bend to suck his cock. 

“Babe, we don’t have to do that tonight, okay? Just--”

Gina’s not speaking to him, though, so instead of giving him head, she hitches her knee over him. Holding his dick against his low belly with her fingers, she sinks down onto the ridge of his cock and starts to slide her cunt along him. 

He looks down, takes in the view of her pretty cunt rolling over him, absorbing the sensation of her wet-heat slicking him up. It’s intoxicating watching her, her eyes half-mast with pleasure, and the memory of how they got together blindsides him. Her behind the bar, passing him shots of moonshine, until one day she sidled up to him, asked him to have a drink with her after her shift. He said yes, and then let his fingers linger over hers. Just testing. Just to see if he still had any sort of game, or if that had been broken along with everything else. 

Gina had smirked at him, cocked her eyebrow and said, “Maybe dinner, then, too.” 

They had ended the night naked and breathless in her apartment. He remembered that night too, the after they gave each other kisses goodbye, as he was walking back to his apartment, all of the thoughts of Cl--

_No_.

Bellamy launches himself up to Gina, and in one movement has one arm around her waist and the other gripped at her neck, crushing her to his mouth. 

Gina’s surprised, but turned on. She grinds her hips harder against him. “I need you in me, Bellamy.” Her breath his hot against his cheek as she kisses from his temple down the cut of his cheekbone, sucking at his lips. 

Their mouths are rough with each other, biting and sucking, teeth flashing. There’s an anxiety there, an anger that they need to resolve, and he doesn’t know how to do it. Not tonight. 

Bellamy pushes that thought aside. “Take me, then.”

Gina groans, reaches a hand down to her cunt. Draws out the moisture there and lubes him up with it while he thrusts into her firm grip. 

But then she sinks down onto him and it’s all he can feel, it’s all the assurance he needs. Her heat radiates over him, her tightness encloses him; Gina folds her body over his, their cheeks pressed together. 

Gina’s skin glows gold against their window, white-gold summer light warming their skin, their bed. Her breath is catching with every thrust, and she can’t last much longer like this; she’s too tired.

Gently, carefully, Bellamy braces his arms behind her and flips them both. He covers her mouth with his, kissing away any protest. He sits back on his knees a little so he can watch himself, watch her. 

“Touch yourself.” He reaches for her hand and she gives it to him, lets him bring it down to her clit. “Make yourself feel good, okay?” 

Gina nods now, too overcome to speak. She holds the base of her palm to her clit and her fingers start rubbing at her outer labia. Bellamy loves watching her touch herself; she’s so sure about it, knows exactly what she likes and how to get herself there. Her fingers pull at her folds, then sink down in a V over his cock as he thrusts into her. He moans as she presses them against his shaft, her knuckles tight against his cock as he fucks her. 

Everything about his cock sliding into her, the repetition of each thrust, how warm and wet she is, how she reaches out to grab at him, one arm braced on his hip and the other running up his shoulder, down his chest, as if she can’t get enough of him...Reality and exhaustion are all bleeding together, and at the same time, he can feel pleasure tightening in his low belly, coiling tight and almost unbearable. 

Then Gina’s gasping, “More, harder, _harder_.” Both hands clench his hips, and he follows the motion. His hips slap into her, her hips rise to meet him. Bellamy leans over, has to get his mouth on her, sucks in a nipple and bites. 

Gina throws her head back, he feels that coil inside him snap. Her walls flutter over him, pulling his orgasm, and fuck, he sees dots in his vision as he comes. 

She’s petting him at the same time trying to wiggle out from under him; she gets so sensitive after she comes. But neither of them want to let the other go, so he doesn’t, holds on to her as he grabs at one of the cloths they keep near the bed to clean up. 

“Let me,” he says softly. Gina nods, smile touched, runs her fingers through his curls as he does. He finishes with a kiss and she laughs a little, squirming away from him. 

“Come to bed,” she murmurs, reaching out. Bellamy does, settling against her side. He drops lips to the back of her neck, kisses her along her shoulder as she drops into a doze. 

Bellamy doesn’t sleep though, he can’t. Every time his eyes flutter close, memories of Gina and Clarke weave together in his mind, one who was hurt and one who had been trapped, both of them safe, and now, both of them _here_. 

So instead of sleeping, he holds Gina and watches as the shadows lengthen along their wall. Bellamy wills himself not to think about the night before, not to think about Clarke, not to think about anything outside of their bed, anything beyond Gina’s warmth curled into him.


	2. we wrestle with it all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A deep dive into Clarke's POV as she struggles with conflicting emotions and how to best move forward in her relationship with Bellamy.

_**One Week Later** _

“I want it short.” 

Abby’s fingers are running through her hair, and Clarke leans back into her mother’s touch. She’s still unused to people, and more so, physical affection--the casual way that Kane claps a hand on her shoulder or how sometimes when she and Bellamy are walking around camp they brush sides. It still makes her jumpy, except for with her mom. With her mom it just feels...good. Getting a wash and haircut brings her back to the Ark, to the last trim her mother gave her before they locked up her up in solitary. The memory pains her a little, since Jake was reading outloud across from them...but it’s also sweet, in its own way. And she knows enough about loss and grief that she’s starting to think about her parents in a different way, now. 

“How short are you thinking?” Abby is gentle with the comb, scraping the tines just right along the scalp, holding it so that it doesn’t catch any tangles. 

Clarke taps her chin. “There.”

Abby hums behind her. “That’s pretty short.”

“It’s...I just want to start fresh, I guess. It’s heavy and gets in my way.” 

“A little longer and you could keep it in a ponytail better.”

“True.” Clarke holds the mirror up to her face. She resolutely doesn’t look at herself--something in her shies away from that--but considers the length. Her mom’s right. Too short would be just as bothersome as too long. “Fine. Middle of the neck then.” 

Soon the sounds of sheers slicing through hair fills the room. Her mom hums behind her. Not quite a melody, not quite anything really, just a happy sound. The touch combined with the warm sunshine and quiet of their corridor makes her feel drowsy, safe. 

“How are you settling in?” Abby’s voice is soft and light, but there’s a faint worry underneath. 

How is she settling in? Things seem so normal, almost like she never left. Life picked back up in the way she always assumed it would, and it feels both right and wrong at the same time. How can the world go on when she’s killed---

But it has. It did in the woods, and it does here. Her body demands food, demands to shit, demands sleep. The people in Arkadia need food, need latrines, need shelter. None of that changes because of what she did or who she is. It’s comforting in as much as it makes her want to scream, too. 

Clarke doesn’t know how to say that to her mom, though. 

“I’m...fine,” she settles on. The word feels awkward in her mouth, and Abby pulls her scissors away. 

“Clarke.”

Clarke tries again. “I’m--I think I’m as good as I can be.” That’s closer to the truth, and she breathes out. “It’s just...a lot to adjust to.”

Abby starts moving again, and she’s silent for a few moments. Hair falls to the floor in a semi-circle around her, blonde and pink, a few sections still braided from the updo. Abby starts to come through it again, finished with the first cut and now moving on to using a razor to give it some volume--a trick she took up in the Ark when she became weirdly obsessed with poring over old hairstyling videos when Clarke was twelve. 

“So what did Kane have to talk to you about this morning?” Abby’s curious voice cuts through Clarke’s reverie. 

“Oh, not much.” Clarke opens her eyes, blinks at the morning sunshine streaming in through the windows. “A grounder came in this morning saying that a piece of the Ark was found in those woods. He wants me to go on a scouting trip in one of the areas I hunted in.”

“Does he?” 

And oh--her mom is pissed. 

“It’s okay mom. Just an overnight. I know.” Clarke turns to look up at Abby. “You just got me back, I know. I'm not going anywhere. ” It hurts a little to have to say those words, but she also can’t blame Abby’s palpable fear. “And I haven’t even decided if I’m going yet.” 

Abby resumes cutting her hair after a beat of silence. “Who’s going with you?”

Clarke keeps her tone carefully neutral when she answers, “Bellamy.”

“Just Bellamy?”

“Yeah. It’s an in and out trip, just to see if it’s there.” 

“It’s too dangerous.” 

“Mom.”

“I can’t believe Kane is even thinking about this,” Abby huffs, scissors sounding more vicious than they did just a second ago. “What with the increased hostilities! And you being...being _Wanheda._ ”

“Yeah, and I was doing just fine hiding it until Roan found me. I’ll be with Bellamy, and we’ll be in the Rover. It’s fine.” 

“It could be a trap.” 

Clarke picks at her leggings. “I know. I talked to Kane about that. He said that the informant is someone that Lincoln trusts. A peaceful man, Lincoln said. Plus, Mom, we need those supplies. It could be some of the water filtration systems that weren’t found with the main wreckage, or some of the manufacturing machinery.” 

Abby sighs. “I know. I know. I just wish it wasn’t you.” She pauses and says carefully, “But I’m glad it’s Bellamy going with you.” 

Clarke blushes, glad that Abby can’t see her face. “Yeah. It’ll be...good for us. I think. Talk about somethings.” 

They’re quiet but then the silence changes, the hair on the back of Clarke’s neck rises, and then, then…

“Bellamy’s done well while you were...gone,” Abby says. 

Clarke pauses, tries to discern what Abby is getting at here. “He seems well.”

Another beat of silence. “You two seemed close before you left.”

“Trying to keep a hundred kids from dying will do that to you.” Clarke tries to say it lightly, but she can hear the tremor in her voice. From behind her the metal razor clicks on the counter as Abby puts it down, then lays her hands on Clarke’s shoulders. 

“You seemed…,” Abby starts, breathes, then pushes on, “like you liked him. Like he might like you, too.”

Clarke wishes Abby didn’t say it, she doesn’t want to talk about this, but at the same time fuck, she does. She realized a lot of things in those months alone, with no one but herself and her thoughts, and even, even when she was at her most lonely, her most alone, the thought of someday seeing Bellamy again kept her going. 

_“You care about him,”_ Lexa once said to her, testing her, _“...you worry about him more.”_

And she did. Even in the forest she thought about him, worried about him, and maybe even...maybe prayer was what she did those nights in caves, or tied into trees, or hiding in abandoned cabins. Words slipped out for her mom, for Raven and Monty and Jasper and Octavia. But they always ended with Bellamy. 

Clarke pushes past the twinge of jealousy, the now familiar accompaniment of embarrassment with it. “I...He’s important to me,” she settles on. “He means a lot to me. He’s...he’s my friend.”

“I remember him, you know. From the Ark.”

“Do you?” Clarke turns her head. Her mother’s face is a little drawn, a little tight with whatever memory she has. “You’ve never told me that.”

“We haven’t had a chance to talk for awhile.” Awhile being an understatement. It's been almost 18 months since they took her to solitary. 

Abby squeezes her shoulder, silently acknowledges that missed time between them, then continues cutting. “I remember Octavia being found and his mother being floated. How the Ark demoted the brightest cadet in years to a janitor. So stupid.” Abby’s voice is irritated, and that’s familiar to Clarke too, just like her touch and the haircut is, and the side of Clarke’s mouth lifts a little to hear it. “But the thing I remember...besides how he shot Thelonious...was how angry he was during that year before he did it. Then with everything that happened on the ground, what you were reporting...I couldn’t believe when I got down how...inseparable you two were.”

“Yeah.” Fuck, and she left him. She’s starting to feel that dragging sensation, that one memory that can always pull her under, no matter what: Bellamy at the gate, _what we did, you don’t have to do this alone._

What he had been offering her was a chance to live, and she didn’t want it. She had thought, at that moment, that what she deserved was a slow death in the wilderness. There were times when she thought letting herself starve would be the easiest thing. She’d go days without checking her traps, wander further and further afield from her known shelters just to...test. Just to see.

Something would always call her back though. Sometimes it was a relief. Sometimes it wasn’t. 

Clarke swallows hard, pushes down the memories. She tunes back into her Mom as Abby says, “...met Gina?”

“What? Who?” Clarke’s tone is snappish. She can feel her mother’s instant reprimand behind her. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

“I asked if you’ve met Gina yet.” There’s something too knowing in Abby’s voice and fuck, Clarke hates this. Hates it all. 

“No. I haven’t met her. I haven’t even seen her yet.” Truthfully, Gina just exists as this spectral attachment to Bellamy, one that she knows is there but they don’t speak of. Bellamy speaks circles around her, a presence in his life that clearly carries weight, but around Clarke he can’t seem to mention her. They talk about the organization of Arkadia instead, of policies and gardening, guard rotations and allocation of quarters, the old things. She appreciates Bellamy’s inclusion of her, his effort to bring her back into the loop, but even still she misses him and their old easy trust.

“Are you avoiding her?” Abby’s tone is gently curious. 

Clarke worries her lip with her teeth. Is she? 

(Yes.)

“No...I don’t think so. It’s just...it’s only been a week. I haven’t felt like going out yet.”

“You should meet her, Clarke.” Abby gives her hair a final comb out. “I think you’d like her if you met.”

*

_Do you even want to like Gina?_

The thought nags at her as she leaves Abby’s quarters and makes her way to the showers. _Maybe that’s why you’ve been avoiding her. You’re worried you might like her, and then…_

Then what? Clarke sighs at herself, scrubs a hand over her face. It’s not like she and Bellamy were anything, just partners and friends. She loves him, but she loves a lot of people, and frankly, this making a huge deal over this jealousy...well...it’s petty. Gina makes Bellamy happy, she assumes--Bellamy doesn’t really talk about Gina--and there was never anything between her and Bellamy (wasn’t there?), so…

Anyway, this is one of the reasons that she wants to go on the trip. She’ll reconnect with Bellamy, and they’ll be friends again, and with that--she thinks, she hopes--all the jealousy and shame and hesitancy...will just go away. More than anything, Clarke is grateful to him, wants good things for him. And by the way his face softens when he talks about Gina, she’s good for him. The thought makes her both incredibly happy and irritatingly jealous and Clarke half-sighs, half-laughs at frustration with herself. 

_What you need is a good shower, rinse this shit out of your mind._

Clarke picks up her shower caddy and towel, then heads to the showers, blessedly empty at midday. The feel of water cascading down her body is still unfamiliar--she hasn’t had a proper shower since the Ark--but then she’s taken back suddenly to a warm day when she was in the forest. She came upon a slow moving creek and followed it down to a short, gentle waterfall. 

No one was around. Even in solitary confinement on the Ark, she had still been aware that there were thousands of other people that shared the vessel she was on. At the dropship there was no privacy, only shared space. Same with Arkadia. 

But on the bank of this stream she was alone. There was no sound but the wind in the trees and the water sliding on the rocks. The solo crickets tuning up for their last encore. The warm sun on her face and the cerulean blue sky above her.

Before she thought too much--or some instinct other than thinking--she shed her shirt. Her fingers slid over the buttons of her pants, then shoved them to the ground. She shuddered at the feeling of her skin exposed to the forest, to the stream, to the sun. 

Cautiously, Clarke walked, step by step, over the pebble beach. The edge of the stream lapped at her toes, cold, but not too cold. The bracing chill of the water causing her nipples to pebble and gooseflesh to rise on her shoulders. She waded through the waist deep water until she stood under the waterfall, letting it run down her face, pound on her shoulders. Feeling clean for the first time since they landed on Earth. 

She lets that feeling permeate her now, that clean-calm tranquility. Her thoughts drift with it, random things popping up, but mostly she feels pretty relaxed, finally. 

Then the door to the shower bangs open, and Clarke jumps. The stream and the woods disappear, back to the cold tile and lukewarm water of the Ark showers. 

“Griffin, you in here?”

“Yeah?” Clarke turns the knob. “Raven, is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” Raven says. Clarke glances over her shoulder, can see through a slit in the curtain that Raven is leaning up against the bank of sinks. “I came to ask you if you wanted to meet at the bar tonight.” 

Clarke’s pulse skitters. She takes the towel from the hook and wraps it around her body. “Um...I don’t know.” 

“Clarke,” Raven sighs. “You’ve been home from a week. We’re your friends. We aren’t going to bite.” 

Clarke steps out of the shower, but keeps her gaze away from Raven. “I just…I don’t know, Raven.”

She can feel Raven eyeing her. Clarke knows that Raven knows why Clarke is hesitant which makes it even more embarrassing. 

“Just say it,” Clarke finally grinds out as she scrunches her hair with a towel. 

Raven smirks at her in the mirror. “Nice haircut.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but a smile tugs at her lips. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.” Raven taps her fingers against the stainless steel of the sink. “You left for three months, you know. Things changed.”

“I know that.” 

“Do you?” Raven’s voice is gentle but there’s an undercurrent of steel there. “You left when...B-...some people needed you most. And look, I get it. I do. I can understand why you felt you had to leave. But then you chose to come home. So...be home, you know?” 

“I missed you, you know.” Clarke meets Raven’s gaze in the mirrors. “All of this avoidance...I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I’m hurting you by avoiding...that.”

“You have been,” Raven shrugs, as if admitting it is a little distasteful but she’s going to make her point anyway. “I know we have shit to work out between us, Griffin, but we can’t do it if you’re not going to be around.”

With that Raven gives her a small squeeze on her arm and turns to make her way out of the shower room. She stops at the door and turns her head, catching Clarke’s gaze. “You can do it, you know. Figure all this out." Raven makes a swooping gesture with her hand. "And coming to the bar is a start."

*

Clarke scrubs out of Medical several hours later feeling a little lighter, a little freer. Talking with Raven and then spending an afternoon with Abby, Jackson, Nyko, and Lincoln treating illnesses and doing health checkups has made her feel...useful. 

“What are your plans for the evening?” Abby asks as they head out into the common area. 

“Raven and some people are meeting for a drink. I thought I’d join them.”

Abby beams, pleased. “That sounds nice.” 

“Yeah. I think it will be.” 

Abby looks like she wants to ask more questions, but can obviously read that this is a tenuous moment, so doesn’t. Clarke is grateful, and Abby is just about to send her off with a squeeze when Kane comes barreling down the hallway. 

“Clarke! Hey, I’m glad I found you.” He stops by Abby and...Clarke smirks when they pretend that nothing-is-happening-we’re-completely-normal in front of her. _If that’s the way they want to play it._

“What’s going on?” Clarke asks, choosing to let them linger in it for just a moment before she asks. 

“Have you decided about going on that mission?” 

Reflex: _Did Bellamy say yes?_ But she says, “Yeah, I did decide. And yes, I’ll go.” 

“Great!” Kane genuinely looks so enthused that Clarke cracks a smile too. But then he looks at Abby who still looks faintly murderous at it all. 

“She’ll be with Bellamy,” Kane’s voice is placating, which knowing her mother, probably isn’t that helpful. 

“I still think it’s too dangerous.” 

“Abby. We need that supplies. Especially if it’s the filtration systems like we think it is.” 

“I know. And I’m glad Bellamy is with her. Just--”

“Mom, I know those woods better than anyone, okay? Those were some of my prime hunting grounds. There are a few deer trails with enough space between trees for the Rover, but I doubt that you guys know them. I know which grounder villages are friendly to us in case we need help.” 

Abby makes a sound of reluctant approval, wraps her arm around Clarke’s back and brings her into her side. “Fine, fine.” 

“Great,” Kane says, relieved this is all working out for him, which makes Clarke smile, just a little. Does it sting that this isn’t her dad? Yeah. But still, it’s nice, after everything, to see her mother smile like she is. “I already talked to Bellamy. Raven is charging up the Rover, and you guys will take it out at first light.”

“Sounds good.” 

Kane leaves after giving her some more details about the trip, and it’s just Abby and Clarke in the hallway again. 

“You’ll be okay.” Abby says, as much to assure herself as Clarke. “You should go on to the bar. Go get a drink.”

“Yeah. If I’m going, I should...go.” 

“I’ll be there to see you off tomorrow morning.” Abby brushes a kiss across her forehead. “Have fun tonight, okay?” 

“Sure thing, Mom. Tons of fun.” Abby turns and walks the same direction as Kane went, leaving Clarke in the hallway, looking toward the Hangar.

*

The cantina area in the Hangar is still mostly empty. The big clock-- _is that from Mount Weather?_ which sends nausea swamping her gut--shows the time to be a bit past four. So early for most people to be done with their days yet. She swallows back the bile. There’s signs of Mount Weather all over Arkadia, especially the Hangar. She just needs to get used to it, that's all. 

Clarke slides onto a bar stool and eyes the pretty bartender wiping cups at the end of the counter. The bartender hasn’t noticed her yet, and it’s not someone that Clarke recognizes from the Ark. But she’s...pretty...and for the first time in awhile a flare of attraction sparks in Clarke’s chest. Clarke takes the time to observe the bartender, just a little, under her eyelids, the way the bronze curls frame her face, the way she’s mouthing words to a song that’s in her head. It’s...cute. 

“Oh! Hey...sorry, I didn’t notice you there,” she says, rounding the corner from the service area. “What can I get you?”

“What do you have?” Clarke’s flirty voice comes out rough. Shit, it’s been a long time since she had occasion to flirt, and then an unwanted memory floats back to her, a fireside conversation with hot eyes and quick smiles. She tamps it down. Not the time. 

“Well…” The woman pauses, and Clarke knows instantly that she knows who Clarke is. But then a quick grin tucks up the corner of the bartender’s cheeks. She’s not going to make it weird, and the tension in Clarke’s shoulders unwinds. “We have moonshine. And then we have moonshine mixed with some berry juice. Or, possibly, moonshine mixed with some lake water, if you’re feeling like you got something to prove.”

Clarke grins. “What kind of berry juice?”

The bartender dips her hand below the counter and brings up a bottle to inspect it. “I’m not sure, honestly. Octavia brought it in this morning with her trading haul.” The woman eyes her with her smile still easy and bright. “Should we try it?”

And they do, knocking back shot glasses of the black-purple, inky juice. Clarke laughs and sputters, the acid tingling at her jaw and tannins instantly drying out her mouth. The bartender does the same, but tries to catch it in her hand, but it’s just a gross mess and they’re both giggling. 

Clarke and the bartender-- _really got to get her name, Clarke_ \--are still cleaning up when a shadow stretches over the bar, and then a familiar voice says, mildly amused and also a bit questioning, “Hey babe.” 

There’s a poignant moment of dissonance there, a moment when Clarke knows that tone of voice, the voice Bellamy uses for her, but he’s never called her ‘babe’ before. The realization that it’s for the cute woman in front of her swoops hot in her stomach, and shit. That’s Gina. 

“Hey yourself,” Gina smiles at him. They meet over the bar in a quick kiss. Clarke looks away as Bellamy settles on a stool beside her. 

“Hey Clarke. Nice to see you here.” 

“Thanks.” Her voice is just an approximation of easiness, not the real thing, and the worst part is that he knows. Clarke turns away from him. “Nice to meet you, Gina.”

“You too, Clarke.” Gina doesn’t miss a beat and slides over a cup of moonshine, without the berry juice. “I knew who you were.”

“I could tell.” Clarke drains the cup, aware that Gina’s eyes are on her and Bellamy’s energy is...restless, there’s no other word for it...and if there’s nothing here then why is it so goddamn weird? 

“Kane said he talked to you about the mission tomorrow?” Clarke blurts out. 

Gina refills her cup, eyes both her and Bellamy. “What mission?”

Bellamy sips at his liquor, dividing glances between the both of them. “Kane asked Clarke and me to go on a mission to scout out some wreckage from Factory station. If it hasn’t been picked over there should be some good machinery there that we can use.” 

“Oh.” Gina’s smile is real, but stretched a little thin. “Sounds fun.”

“It’s kind of hostile territory,” Clarke says, unthinking, and Gina’s smile drops and shit she is no good at this. “I just mean...it’s near Azgeda. We’ll have to be careful. That’s all.”

Bellamy’s restlessness morphs into low-key irritation with her, something she hasn’t felt off him since before he went into the Mountain. _God, Raven, where are you?_

“When do you leave?” Gina’s is fixed on Bellamy now, and Clarke breathes a little easier. In no way does she want to be a source of irritation to Gina, who...well, now that she met her, she likes her. Like everyone told her she would. 

“Tomorrow morning,” Bellamy replies and whatever prickliness came upon him softens. “I just found out this morning.”

“I know. Just be safe.” But Clarke watches Gina give him a look that clearly says this is not over, but what isn’t over is probably not much to do with the actual mission. 

By the time Raven, Monty, and Harper swing onto barstools a few moments of awkward silence later, Clarke is as red as a beet both from downing too much moonshine too fast and embarrassment. After three months of not dealing…

But honestly, it’s better than she expected. Raven’s presence helps Gina relax, and Monty starts talking specs of what they’re looking for to her and Bellamy. It’s cute to watch the way Harper and Monty orbit around each other, especially after Mount Weather; how Miller, who she knew from the Ark as a jerk-alpha kid, gets sweet on Bryan. 

Life moved on without her, sure, but the seeds for everything around were events, people she knew. Their shared history wasn’t lost to her. 

That thought gives her a bit of hope for her trip with Bellamy as she walks home a few hours later, but the hope dims as she enters her dark room and blearily crawls into bed. People are still walking home from the cantina, and as she flips her pillow and settles down, a baby cries down the corridor. Without the constant machine hum of the Ark to cover those noises there’s even less privacy. And bird chatter is a lot different than knowing that people are fucking down the hall. 

It’s claustrophobic, and it makes her itch, and it makes her want to wander, but instead she stays in bed and stares at the ceiling. Her mind trips in that half dream state, going back to the dark throne room, and then back again to the dank cave where Roan kept her. Her elated-fear at seeing Bellamy, how terror ricocheted through her body with the certainty that Roan was going to kill him. She had still thought him dead without that leg wound treated; Kane later told her that they were his support team. Abby and Kane had shared a look when he told her, one that made her know she didn’t have the whole story. 

_You don’t have the whole story._ Raven’s voice next: _Things changed_. Then the kiss that Gina and Bellamy shared; then the careful personal distance that Bellamy kept from her all night, the clipped and perfunctory answers to her questions. 

Clarke flips over, jack-knifes her leg up and buries her face in the pillow. No. She would not give into all of this sadness and regret and jealousy. She would not be that person. She made her choices. The choice to agree to send him into the Mountain, the choice to stake their survival on Lexa, the choice to leave when she couldn’t deal. These were the consequences. 

Fuck. She swipes a lone tear that tickles her nose. This trip is a chance to spend time with Bellamy, that’s all. Make up some lost ground. And besides, this is how she can be useful. After she gets home, she’ll get to know Gina. The jealousy will go away, even if she has to beat it into submission, and she’ll move on. 

_That’s what you did in a situation like this_ , Clarke thinks as she resigns herself to another sleepless night. _You move on._ With that, the confines of her bed and the room become too much. She throws back her sheets and gets dressed, slips out her door, through the dark hallway, and into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Bad Blood" by Sleeping at Last
> 
> Next Up: 
> 
>    
> Chapter 3: Bellamy's POV during the overnight trip
> 
>    
> Chapters 4: Gina's POV during and after the trip


	3. dark waltz

Bellamy should have known this was going to happen. He and Clarke are a breath away, both as still as a summer afternoon before a storm. Heat and confusion and longing and hurt fill the space between them, makes it feel like she’s against him when she’s not. In any other lifetime, in any other set of choices that could lead them to this moment, he would lean down and fit his mouth against hers, feel her breathe into him, cup her jaw in his hands.

His hand twitches at the thought and the moment shatters. They both take a step back, eyes still locked. Blood thunders in his ears, and Clarke’s chest heaves as a dark crimson flush rolls up her face.

A log on the fire pops. They both flinch, eyes snapping to watch the swirl of sparks join the glittering stars. After the stilted conversations, the fight, and the confessions in the night, now, now there is only silence between them.

Suddenly, a wind kicks up. Late-summer leaves crash like thunder, the dry limbs crack against each other. The fire dances, flickering shadows lick and stretch, and still. They can’t move. There’s no going back from this moment. But there doesn’t seem to be a way forward, either.

*

_First Light_

“Clarke,” Bellamy sighs. “Do I really have to wear this?”

“You need to look like a grounder.”

“Why? We’re driving the Rover. They’re going to know we’re Sky People.”

“In case we have to walk. In case we have to go to a village.”

Bellamy rolls his shoulders in his new coat and gets scratched across the neck. Scratched? He glares down at the offending garment. “But there are…studs…on it.”

There are dark purple bruises under Clarke’s eyes, but still, she smiles at him, tired but also easier than he’s seen her in a week. “It has to be authentic. Grounders like their flash.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes at the Ark term for whatever scrap they could repurpose for fashion. It didn’t always look great, just like these spikes on his shoulders looked ridiculous, but it served the purpose of letting people know your status. He assumed Grounders used their studs and grommets the same.

“Fine. But no face paint.”

“No face paint,” she agrees. He watches as she twists some goop into her hair, using the Rover window as a reflection. It turns those strands a dark mahogany.

“Didn’t think I’d have to be using this shit again so soon,” she says, voice deliberately light.

“Is that where the pink came from?” The question comes out stilted and Clarke raises her eyebrow at him. Asking about her time away is weird, but maybe Gina’s right. Maybe they should talk about it. He’d prefer not to, though, because talking about it just…feels like shit…and who cares, anyway. She’s home safe. That’s what matters now.

“Yeah. I dyed it red. When it washed out it became pink. It’s actually not that hard, there are these berries—”

“You two ready?” Kane’s interrupts them from the opposite side of the Hangar. He’s accompanied by Abby, which when Bellamy looks over at Clarke she’s...got a curious look on her face, partly-amused, partly that little furrow in her brow.

Abby tugs on Clarke’s patchy red and grins. “After all that work, too.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Just for the trip.”

“Alright you two. Out and back. Radio in every half hour until you can’t, and---”

“Map everything,” Clarke finishes. “We will. Promise.”

“Be safe.” Abby hugs Clarke tightly, then to his surprise, hugs him, too. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we will be.” Part of him wants to reassure her that yes, Clarke will be coming back with him, but it’s evident enough that they’re both thinking it. So he just nods at her, and Abby, she gets it.

Bellamy looks over at Clarke. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” She gives her mom one last squeeze and opens the Rover door to grip the handle and lift herself in.

Kane claps a hand on his shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

“Sure thing.” Bellamy rounds the Rover, opens his own door. It feels like every movement he makes is singular, like there is a collective breath between him and Clarke being held until they can make it out of Arkadia. He cranks the ignition and the Rover roars on, presses the clutch and puts the massive truck in gear.

Clarke clutches onto the sides of the seat as they bump and roll out of the Hangar.

“Not worse than the dropship, right?”

She flashes him a small grin. “That’s what I thought on our way back from Polis. That it was like the dropship.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Clarke drops her head against the headrest. “Someday.”

Bryan and Monroe pull the gates open. The morning birds resting on top swoop away, the rest disturbed by the creaks and groans join them, and Bellamy and Clarke watch as they swirl together in the far west field.

Bellamy opens his mouth to say something, tell her about his plans for that far field—he and Bryan have talked about an orchard, maybe, or trenching the lake for flax. It’s something that excites him, finally being able to even consider things like if they had the right climate for flax or how they could find apple starts. Things that he’s read about since the Ark, but that he might actually get to do. And soon.

But there’s another look on her face as she watches the murmation, a cross between longing and worry, so Bellamy doesn’t. Clarke has her own stuff to deal with.

Then the gates are open and Monroe waves them out. Bellamy shifts the Rover into drive instead, giving Bryan and Monroe a nod as they drive past.

Once the road smooths out, he slides a glance over to her. “Maybe I’ll teach you to drive.”

Clarke cracks an eye at him. There’s doubt in her voice when she says, “Maybe.” A pause. “How did you learn?”

“Gina.” That day is burned in his memory. He had spent a good two weeks in a drunk-hungover daze after Clarke left until she had knocked on his door in the early hours of the morning.

_He cracked open the door to see the bartender beyond it, looking both perky and determined and he hated it. “What?”_

_“Get dressed. Come with me.”_

_“I have shift in thirty.”_

_She raised her eyebrow and smirked at him. “You’re not going to shift like that.”_

_“Yes I a---why am I even arguing with you?”_

_“Because you’re coming with me. Meet me at the bar in ten.”_

And he had, impressed and annoyed with her. She drove them out into a meadow and plied him with water and biscuits while she taught him the ins and outs of the Rover. He had gotten back to his room that night, and for the first time in two weeks, realized he hadn’t thought about Clarke once.

But now Clarke sits next to him, and that memory seems...different. “Go on,” she says. “Is that how you guys met?”

“No.” Bellamy’s voice is rough, harsher than he intended. Clarke stills beside him. “Raven introduced us.”

Not technically a lie.

“Oh,” Clarke says finally. “That’s...nice.”

And now it’s awkward. 

The conversation he had with Gina the night before comes to him. Conversation might be overselling it, he snorts to himself, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. More like an evasive maneuver on his part, and he (and she) damn well knew it. 

They got back to their room late, entered with their laughter fading as soon as they crossed the threshold. 

Gina busied herself with undressing and taking care of her cuts, while he pulled off his shirt and toed off his boots. 

“I’m glad I got to meet Clarke,” she said between winces as she stretched out her arm to clean it better. 

He had been resolutely trying to _not_ think about Clarke at the bar. It had been one thing to walk around with her at camp, to try and get some of their relationship back through work. That would be the easiest, he thought, to just work with her. And when she didn’t come to the bar during that week, well, all the better. Easier. 

“Yeah.” Bellamy shucked his pants and headed into their half-bath to brush his teeth. “It’s good she came out.” 

“Bellamy…” Gina stopped for a second. He could hear her rustling around in the room, and then she appeared at the open bathroom door, leaned on the jamb. “You were a little weird tonight.”

“Was I?” he asked, trying to keep the uneasiness from his voice, trying to tamp down on the panic rising in his chest. 

“A little.” 

Bellamy looked over at her, standing all pretty like, hip cocked and one of his undershirts clinging to her breasts. Her eyes challenged him while at the same time sympathetic, a look that’s so utterly Gina. He didn’t want to lose it. He didn’t want to loose her, what they’ve started together, something gentle and kind, a mercy on this scorched Earth. 

“Is it Clarke?”

He started, covered up a choke with spitting out his toothpaste. After rinsing and patting his mouth dry, all under her no bullshit gaze, he turned to her. “Why would it be Clarke?”

“Bellamy…,” she tried again, this time her voice taking on an edge. “Come on. We’ve talked about her before. You’ve told me about your relationship with her. I don’t know why we can’t talk about it now that she’s back.”

He shrugged, brushed past her into the room. “Because it’s nothing.” 

“It’s not _nothing_ , Bellamy. She was--is--your partner. She was dead, for all you knew, and then you found her, then she was probably dead _again_ , and now she’s back.” Her words grew more heated, and Bellamy felt his walls lock into place. He can’t talk about this. “But now--now you won’t even talk to me about it.” She eyed him, a look that sliced right to his core. _“Why?”_

Bellamy clenched his teeth. They easy truth that had been between them before Clarke came back has dissipated over the last week, and he knew it was his fault. He wasn’t willing--he couldn’t--(he _can’t_ )--tell Gina the truth. But somehow not telling her means losing her too, and that sent cold desperation coursing through his veins. 

“Because there’s nothing to say.” 

“There’s nothing to say.” She whipped the covers back on the bed with a _thwap_. “After all that talking we did before she came back, when you thought she was dead. Now that she’s _here_ there’s ‘nothing to say’.” 

Bellamy licked his lips as he watched her and tried again. “Everything is fine.” 

“Jesus, Bellamy, no. That’s what I’m telling you. Everything's _not_ fine, but instead of talking about it, you’re not telling me. I’m not an idiot. I can see that something is up, and I’m giving you an opportunity to tell me about it.” Gina swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and whispered, “Don’t you trust me? After everything? Don’t you trust me with this? That we can figure it out?”

Gina’s chest was heaving, and Bellamy honestly had no idea what to do, he’d never been in a relationship before. He’d never had a conversation around an insinuation that he had feelings for someone else. He didn’t know how to _do_ this, not well, anyway, not in the way that Gina deserved. He had no idea how to even approach the feelings he had for Clarke, anyway, not in a way that didn’t--(doesn’t)--terrify the shit out of him. He could barely admit that he loved Gina, even though he does, because it makes him afraid for her, for them, for what Earth does to the people you love.

“Babe, there’s nothing to figure out,” he said. And it is immediately, clearly, the wrong thing to have said. 

Her eyes lowered, she sniffed, then looked back at him with dry eyes. “Fine. If that’s the truth.”

“It’s the truth.” His voice was, even to him, small. “My best friend is back. That’s all. I was just tired. Nothing is going on.” 

“Fine.” 

But when they got into bed, Gina rolled over, back to him. And for the first time since they started dating, Bellamy fell asleep without her weight on his chest. 

*

It’s like that for awhile, both he and Clarke wrapped in a woolly silence they can’t seem to penetrate. They try, asking questions about their time apart only to be met with clipped, half-answers. By the time they stop for a bathroom break and lunch, they’ve given into the silence. Bellamy concentrates on driving, and Clarke closes her eyes.

“You go first,” Bellamy says as he puts the Rover into park next to a thicket of trees. Some of them are already starting to turn, yellow leaves bright against a green late-summer backdrop. Low hanging clouds have long since suffocated the sun, and now the morning cool has given way to oppressive, humid warmth. He sheds his jacket and tosses it in the back of the truck, wishes he could take off his shirt too, but, well.

Clarke watches him, then shrugs out of her jacket. “Too fucking hot.” Underneath she’s wearing a dark green henley, the top buttons undone, and it’s sticking to her just like his shirt is sticking to him.

Shit. He glances away, clears his throat. “There’s some good coverage over there to do whatever.”

“Take a piss?” She supplies, brat that she is.

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, take a piss, have a shit, whatever.”

“I survived three months in the woods, alone,” she tosses over her shoulder as she walks away. “Pretty sure I have shitting outdoors handled.”

God. He snorts but also smiles, and that feels good. Feels a little them, towards the end of the dropship days, when their friendship had edged on flirting sometimes.

_But you can’t flirt with her._

_But you’re not._

He watches her disappear into the trees. Memories--good ones, bad ones--pick at his brain, snippets of conversations between them ( _if you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you, he’d do anything for her, to protect her, I can’t lose you too,_ her shrieking _I’ll do anything I’ll stop fighting_ \--god, he had not wanted her to stop fighting), the feeling of her wrapped in his arms, once joyfully and once so full of aching disbelief that he has a hard time processing it.

Then she’s back, brush swaying closed behind her as she moves forward. They eat a hurried lunch and are back in the Rover. There’s not much conversation now, just her watching the landscape and as they get further out from Arkadia, directing him around thick stands of trees.

After an hour or so he skids to a stop. “We can’t get through.”

Clarke purses her lips and looks around. “Yeah, you’re right.” She glances at the map on her lap, compares it with the tablet in her lap. “We should leave the Rover behind and walk the rest of the way. It’s not much, maybe a five-k hike.”

“You know this area, you said?”

“Yeah. It’ll be a slight uphill, but nothing terrible.” She’s already popping open the door and sliding out.

He looks at the sky. It’s early afternoon, but with the hike and inspection of the site, they might as well camp there. “Let’s take our gear.”

Clarke nods. “Good idea.”

Bellamy backs the Rover into some undergrowth, and then, packs fitted on their backs, they head off.

*

The air cools off in the shade of the forest. It’s companionable walking with her, like the days they scouted around camp together. They fall into an easy rhythm, stopping every so often to locate themselves on the tablet. 

“Oh, look at that!” Clarke stops suddenly and he walks fully into her. She stumbles, and his hand shoots out to steady her, his hand on the fabric and the fabric sliding up the curve of her hip as she steadies herself. If his fingers linger a half-second too long, feeling the warmth of her skin through her shirt, he shoves the thought away.

Bellamy looks over his shoulder, up and around at the tree tops. “What? Look at what?”

“That!” Clarke points to a clump of large, dusky orange ruffles the size of a soccer ball protruding off of an oak.

“Goddamn,” Bellamy says. “That’s huge. What is that?”

“It’s delicious is what it is.” Clarke motions him near her. “Get that empty bag you have out. We’re having this tonight.”

She notes his suspicious look and laughs. “Promise. It’s fine. I traveled with a grounder woman, Itka, for a few days She pointed out all sorts of stuff. Besides, this has medicinal properties too, and I want to take some back to my mom.”

Bellamy’s grins at her enthusiasm, and after he stuffs some in the sack, she takes it from him and her eyes begin to rove the forest floor as they walk. Whatever fog she was in, whatever distance was between them, evaporates. She stops for chicory and both of them snack on blackberries off an obliging blackberry vine that caught and ripped Bellamy’s pants.

“I can mend them,” he says at her almost comically concerned face.

“You can?” her tone is unsure.

“My mom was a seamstress. And I always carry a patch kit.”

The smile she gives him is easy and endearing that the tips of his ears heat. “That’s so…interesting,” she says, voice on the edge of teasing. But then she catches herself, too, and abruptly turns and walks forward.

Not ten steps later, she stops. This time, with the advantage of height, he sees ahead of her.

“There it is,” Clarke breathes out. “Holy shit.”

The crash site isn’t big, not in comparison to the crater that Factory made, but it’s a solid hunk of metal about the size of the dropship. Trees are downed in a ring around it, and some scorch marks remain on the ground and trees even through three months of rain and weather.

Clarke shivers. “It’s kind of eerie. It always is, seeing the Ark on the ground.”

Bellamy walks closer. “It doesn’t look like anyone has been here.”

“Grounders don’t like our stuff,” Clarke says from right behind him. She shuffles in her pack and brings out the tablet. “So what do we have?”

“From first glance…some of these solar panels look alright. And we can always use more metal siding.”

They move even closer, stepping carefully over shards of metal and splintered branches.

“Is it the machinery Kane was hoping for?” Clarke asks from a few feet away, fingers moving over the tablet as she enters in the items he calls out.

“Yeah.” He swallows hard. Clarke is right, seeing the Ark on the ground like this is--well, it’s weird. It’s not like this was the section he lived in, but it still jars him that they all literally fell from the sky. “Yeah, it looks like it might be some of the machinist stations. We’ll have to get some people who can actually cut through all of this metal to see for sure.”

“So a good find, then?”

Bellamy nods. “One of the best we’ve had in months. Raven will be delighted at all of this new shit to sort through.”

Clarke snorts. “For sure. And I heard her say that if she had some extra solar panels she might add some water heating for the showers.”

“I’ll believe when I get a warm shower.” He keeps walking around the parimeter. “I’m not sure the water filtration will be in this part like Kane wanted.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Shit. We really needed that, too.”

“Didn’t you say that you’d need to get some people out here to see first?”

“Yeah.” He calms a bit. But still. “We just…really need those filters.”

“The ones from Alpha and Mecha station aren’t enough?”

“They’re okay. But they’re old, and a lot of them were damaged in the crash. And the Grounders have occasionally left some dead cows in our reservoir, so, you know, they can only do so much.”

“They’ve _what?_ ”

“You haven’t heard, Clarke? I thought I told you.” He works hard to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Yeah. All summer long, putting shit in our water. Sending groups to try and intimidate people away from Mount Weather. Not meeting us when we’ve arranged land talks.”

“Oh.” Her voice is small, and she shifts her weight on her feet. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t put all the pieces together.”

“We _won_ that Mountain, Clarke. We should get to use it however we want.”

“I know,” she whispers, looking at him. “I know.”

The image of Clarke on her knees before Lexa flickers before his eyes, and that familiar anger scratches at him. He turns and walks away, not altogether inconspicuous, and can feel her gaze burning on the skin of his neck.

They’re _just_ getting back on their footing, to some kind of normal, he’s just starting to think he can do this, maybe, keep Clarke as his work-partner and Gina as his girlfriend. That he can love Clarke as his friend, and Gina as his girlfriend, and those can be separate things.

He cannot, they cannot, fuck this up. 

*

But they fuck it up. 

*

“Lexa kissed me, you know.” 

They’ve settled in after dinner, both sitting by the fire. Close, but not too close. They had been talking about the next morning, what they would need to tell Kane, sidestepping the issues of Arkadian politics and the Grounders for the sake of ease. There had been a lull in the conversation, and now...now this. 

He looks up sharply at her. “What? When? While you were in Polis?”

Clarke rearranges her legs and holds her hands out to the flames. “No. Before. Before Mount Weather.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Clarke has an inward look for a few seconds, lost in a memory, then snaps out of it. “It was confusing. As in. I liked her, at the time, but I don’t know.”

“She’d just made you kill Finn. How could you like her?”

“I know. I don’t know.”

“That’s fucked up.” Anger sharpens his voice, both at Lexa and at Clarke for the resigned way she talks about it all. Who is this person? “What did you do?”

“Broke it off, in the moment, at least. Told her I wasn’t ready. And then, well. Everything.”

“Yeah.” Everything. A succinct way to put it. “How’d she treat you in Polis?”

“Fine, I guess. Tried to talk to me a few times.” Clarke closes her eyes, says softly, “I don’t know, Bellamy.”

Bellamy shrugs. He wants Clarke to confide in him, ignores the voice that tells him this isn’t what one _does_ when dating someone else, but why not? Clarke is his friend. 

He’s silent for a bit too long though, trying to decide whether or not to say anything. Clarke sighs and throws a twig in the fire.

Besides, they’re at an impasse. They’ve been heading to this since she decided to come home. Polis. Bellamy knows that she didn’t want to come home. Clarke knows that he knows that, and neither of them want to talk about the reason why. But suddenly the earlier anger starts to build in his gut.

“Don’t know what?”

Clarke’s head snaps up at his tone, her brow furrows. He’s sorry for it and at the same time, suddenly, spoiling for a fight. Where this has come from, he doesn’t know—well, he does, but god, why now? And why is he just giving into it?

 _You know why_.

“You don’t know why you wanted to stay in Polis and not come home, maybe?”

“Bellamy—”

“Come on, Clarke. This I actually need to know. You were about to stay, weren’t you? We risked our lives and Gina almost died, and you were going to stay?”

She shrinks back from him, just a little, shoulders tensing. Fuck, that just makes him angrier. Where is her _fight_?

Clarke looks away. “Maybe.”

“Why? Why would you stay with her? Because you got a nice room and nice clothes and got to bow down before the woman that made you kill 380 people?”

Her eyes are shining and he’s gone too far, but he has this _need_ for everything in his life to be clear right now. For the lines to be drawn. A distant part of him knows that this might be the best way to break his connection to Clarke, and shit, he doesn’t want it but he does. He doesn’t want to think about that flash of pride when Pike spoke about Clarke concurrently with the warmth in his chest when he comes home and Gina is reading on the bed. Those two can’t coexist, _they can’t_ , and one of them has to go.

And the truth of the matter is this: Clarke left him that day outside of Arkadia. Gina found him.

“Were you even going to come back, Clarke?” He needs to know. He _has_ to know.

“I did come back, Bellamy.” Her voice is a bit stronger now, defensive even though he can tell she doesn’t feel sure.

“No. Not from Polis. From your little navel-gazing sojourn in the woods.”

Clarke stills on the log across from him. This isn’t the quiet breaking of hurt, oh no, this is the stillness of a panther in the grass. Her eyes light on him and glint in the firelight, shrewdly assessing him, figuring out where he’s weak and he’s _alive_ with it, knowing that they are finally going to fucking do this.

His nostrils flare and he rolls his shoulders back.

“No.” Clarke looks him dead on when she says it. “No. I wasn’t going to come back.”

Bellamy snorts. “You were going to leave us.”

“Yes. Didn’t you notice, Bellamy? I turned around and walked away. That’s what leaving _is_.”

Bellamy’s lip curls into a snarl at her tone, cruel and soft, and as purposefully responding as he is setting out traps.

“Never to come back, then. Never to see your Mom, again, Clarke? After everything she went through to get down to Earth?” She flinches, almost imperceptibly. Bellamy keeps going, driven by this bitterness that just keeps washing over him. “Not to see the hundred again? After everything _we_ did to save them time and again? You would just leave everyone?”

Clarke swallows hard, licks her lips, but keeps that same fucking enraging tone. “Yeah. I was going to leave _everyone,_ Bellamy. Leave my mom. Leave Raven. Leave Jasper. Monty. Lincoln. Octavia. Leave Arkadia.” Clarke pauses. He’s clenching his jaw so hard that his teeth ache, waiting for it, waiting for her to _just say it_.

The words hang in the atmosphere for one crystallized moment, and then she does.

“Leave you.”

The words crash over them. Clarke recoils like she reached out and slapped him; he glances as if struck.

Electricity so palpable that Bellamy can hear it thrumming in his ears holds them in place. Then Clarke snaps it, standing up and whirling away. Before he can even process it she’s vanished into the woods.

*

Bellamy doesn’t go after her.

 _You should go after her_.

_If she wants to come back, she will._

But as soon as she’s gone, there’s an emptiness in his chest that aches, vast in the middle and sharp on the edges. The same one that happened when Clarke left the first time, the same one that he kept catching himself on like hidden splinters that burrow into his skin.

 _You dick, you asshole,_ ring in his mind as he lays down on his sleeping pallet. But also, _maybe this will work. Maybe this will be it_.

He’s not tired though, and as he considers the night sky above him, the words circle in his mind, give form to the the emptiness in him, make him bleed.

*

Time passes. 

Bellamy doesn’t know how much, enough time that he throws another log on the fire.

He worries about her. In a way that makes him angry at her and at himself.

But then he snaps the worry off. Clarke lived out in those woods by herself. When—if—she wants to come back, she will.

Bellamy remembers Abby and feels guilty at the look she gave him, the silent pleading to bring her daughter back. His eyes snap shut, willing that memory to go away, and willing Clarke to come back. Just because they were broken doesn’t mean she can’t live in Arkadia, for gods’ sake, _Clarke please come back for your mom_.

His thoughts jumble together as exhaustion creeps over him. Gina curled over him, naked and resplendent in the moonlight, kissing him soft as she fucks him. A glimpse of Clarke across the Ark courtyard, talking with Raven, her face lighting up in a laugh that surprised her, delighted her. The sight that shocked him, rounding the corner into the Hanger and seeing a blonde, hair shorn, bent to chestnut curls, both laughing, Gina reaching out to wipe something off of Clarke’s face.

But soon those images are mixing together, and the line he tried to make with this fight drove her away, but it didn’t help him. Bellamy’s eyes burn even as sleep steals over him. With a sigh, he decides to give into the dark.

*

Bellamy startles awake before Clarke even gets his name out of her mouth, but she says it anyway as he pushes himself to sitting, still half-asleep.

“Light sleeper?” she comments dryly. Inexplicably, there’s a small smile on her face.

“Always,” he replies without thinking, “because of the Ark.”

Clarke nods. She’s squatting next to his bedroll, her eyes searching him. He pushes himself all the way up to seated; her eyes track his movements until he stills.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks, but she holds his gaze as she says it. “I’m sorry for leaving.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy breathes the word before he can stop himself. He pauses, gives his brain a few seconds to catch up. Fuck. This was _not_ the way. Maybe they had to try it, but they both should have known it wouldn’t work. “I’m sorry too. For everything I said.”

“You had a right to be mad. I left you. We were friends and partners and I thought…God, Bellamy.” Clarke twitches her face away from him. “You have to know that I—fuck. I’m just going to say it.” She looks him in the eye. “You have to know that I think you can do anything, okay? You survived the Dropship. You went into the Mountain. You pulled the lever with me at Mount Weather. Whatever needed doing, you did it. And you always looked so…so _strong_ …doing it. So sure.” 

A tear slips down Clarke’s cheek, and she doesn’t bother wiping it away. “I left because I couldn’t handle it. I thought…I thought you could. I felt like all I did was fuck up, so I had to leave. So I wouldn’t ruin what you, and my mom, and Kane, everyone…was trying to build.” Clarke stops, tears running freely down her cheeks. Bellamy watches as she ducks her head, and he can hear the steady drip of tears hit her pants. His own breathing is shallow, he can’t processwhat she’s saying, it’s all so much.

“Anyway. I’m sorry,” she finishes, looking at him full on again. “And I get it if you can’t forgive me now, or ever, I understand if this is always between us--”

But Bellamy can’t listen to her any longer. He pulls her into him, and it’s probably the most awkward hug ever, him sitting sideways and her toppled into him. It probably shouldn’t be happening at all, but then she just sinks into him, and he grips her tight, and this time, he doesn’t let go. 

*

Then they talk. 

*

Bellamy tells her about the first two weeks. About Gina, how it’s soft between them, and good. He tells her about Arkadia, and Kane and Abby, and how Jasper drinks too much, and how happy Miller and Bryan are to be together. 

He watches her eyes light up, her delicate mouth curl into a smile. They might have been chatting on their daily rotations around Arkadia, but they hadn’t been actually sharing much. Now they are. 

Clarke reciprocates, hesitant at first, and there’s a pang in his chest when he realizes that talking is harder for her now than it has been before. Things weren’t always easy between them, but being honest was. Now he watches her struggle, like she’s weighing every word against herself, and then against what he would think, to the point where he finally grasps her hands and tells her to _stop, just fucking talk, Clarke_. 

She takes a deep breath then, slowly extracts her hands as he pulls his back into his lap. 

But then she does. About the first weeks, starving and hungry. About Niylah, and how the woman taught her how to speak trigedasleng and gave her advice on how to set traps and skin animals. The woman Itka who showed her what forest food to eat, what was medicinal, what was poison. He can feel his eyes bulge in horror when she tells him about the panthers. At first he laughs, thinking she’s bullshitting, but then she edges down the back collar of her shirt to show him the new, shiny pink scars. 

“Fuck, Clarke. Did you ever think about _not_ killing a panther? Sticking to rabbits or I don’t know, maybe a fox or something if you got bored?”

Clarke shrugs and then says words that come out casual but felt like a mace to his chest: “I wasn’t thinking about living much at all.”

His voice sticks in his throat at first, and he looks down, away, avoiding the resigned truth in Clarke's face. Bellamy clears his throat. “What changed?” 

“I got kidnapped,” she says sardonically. Bellamy chuckles, because that’s what they do. Bad jokes have always come easy between them, gallows humor a survival instinct. Clarke’s lips pull up and she laughs a little too, snapping a twig and tossing it on the fire. She looks back at him, shifts so she’s leaning a little closer, her face tentative, but open. “But for real? Seeing you. Before you came into the cave, all Roan could say was how I was a traitor and my people would forget me. That they didn’t care. That I was a coward. And,” she holds up her hand to silence him. Her mouth thins to a line, and Bellamy sees the painful resonance of those words within Clarke. "And that's how I felt. But then you were there."

The sincerity of her words, the palpable relief of him being there is too close to how Bellamy had felt, too close to the cracked open, raw part of his chest that is so thankful Clarke is home. Bellamy _tsks_ himself and dodges it. “Didn’t clock my position like an asshole and nearly got us both killed, you mean.”

Clarke shifts her gaze slowly from the fire to him. “Bellamy.”

He looks up from under his eyelids at her tone, at once gentle and reprimanding and full of...something he won’t let himself name. Bellamy doesn’t know why he tells her, but he does: “I tried to go after you.”

“What? After Roan stabbed you?”

Bellamy flushes, hard, figures _why the fuck not_ because he can’t see this moment happening between them ever again, so might as well say it all now. “Yeah. Uh, I didn’t want to lose...you. I thought it was our only chance, and I had fucked it up.”

“Fuck, Bellamy.” She eyes him. “I looked at you, before we left. I made Roan let me make sure he hadn’t hit an artery. I didn’t think he had, but still. It must have hurt like a motherfucker.” 

“It did.”

Clarke sighs, leans her head onto her knees. Her shoulders are shuddering a little, and is she crying? He can’t quite tell, he thinks so. Shit. This is just not going well at all. 

But then she looks up, and tear tracks glint in the firelight but she also looks pissed. “You always have to be the goddamn hero, Bellamy.” 

That shocks him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You, I’m talking about you, and how you have this _need_ to be the fucking hero. ” 

“I don’t need to be the hero, Clarke. I wanted to get to you because I thought he was taking you to the Ice Nation, and that their stupid fucking Queen would kill you.” 

Clarke works her jaw. “But Roan just _stabbed_ you.” 

“So? You were about to die. Because you are some _Wanheda_. And don’t even get me fucking started on that.” 

She rolls her eyes, defiant. “What, you want credit for killing three hundred and eighty people?”

“I sure as fuck don’t want you taking it on _alone_ , Clarke!” The words explode out of him. “Wasn’t that part of the problem, anyway? This was a burden that you thought you had to bear alone, but you _don’t_. Shit, neither of us could have pulled that lever without Monty, but for some reason, you think this is all on you, and it’s not. But now even the Grounders reinforce that shit, and are trying to make it _legendary_. It’s fucking sick.” 

“You know, fuck you, Bellamy.” Clarke’s finger juts out and she pokes at his chest. “You don’t get to do this.” 

“Don’t get to do what?”

“Get to hear my apologies and hear my confessions and then _get mad at me again_!”

“I’m not mad at you!”

“Then what? Then what the _fuck_ are you mad at Bellamy, if not me?” 

“I don’t know!”

“You _do_ know! You’re just not saying!” 

Clarke sounds just like Gina, her eyes are stormy and wild, and after the day that they’ve had--fuck, he just wants to hold her, to kiss her, to give some resolution to all of the chaos between them. Clarke is just staring at him, too, caught with him, and he can’t take his eyes off of her. Then Bellamy doesn’t even know _what_ the fuck happens, but they both jerk almost imperceptibly forward at the same time. 

_Fuck_. 

The moment that passes between them is unbearably long. He can hear the wind roil in the trees and the clack of dry limbs and the sound of his breathing and her breathing. Clarke’s eyes dart to his lips, and her tongue flicks out to wet her own. He swallows, watches as her tongue graces her pretty mouth, how pink blooms on her cheeks. Then his hand twitches forward and the fire crackles. They both startle, and the moment is gone. 

“I…,” Bellamy starts. He wants to say he’ll go somewhere, but he’s already on his pallet. 

“I...should go to bed.” Clarke propels herself up and over to her pack with such quick motion he barely sees her move. “Good night, Bellamy.” 

“Night.” 

There’s nothing more to say. Bellamy listens out for her movements, then waits until it’s quiet for awhile before looking over his shoulder to make sure she’s safely tucked in. She is, lying flat on her back, eyes open, contemplating the waning night sky. Then he rolls over, back to the fire, back to her. Nothing happened. 

Nothing happened. 

_Nothing happened._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from _[Dark Waltz](http://www.towrsmusic.com/towrs-lyrics/2015/8/31/dark-waltz)_ by Tow'rs
> 
> Thank you to the100skypeople for beta'ing <3
> 
> Chapters 4 & 5: in which Gina makes mashed potatoes and contemplates her situation. And maybe comes up with a solution.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title from _Bad Blood_ by Sleeping at Last


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